


The Ghost of the Black Lake

by Rowanmoonlight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Chains, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drowning, Exorcisms, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Muggleborn discrimination, Murder, Not Beta Read, One Shot, Original Character Death(s), Sad Ending, mentioned torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:28:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24209734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rowanmoonlight/pseuds/Rowanmoonlight
Summary: She didn’t remember anything. Not her name, not how she died, nothing. All she knew was floating endlessly in or above the waters of the lake. It was eternal.-Viviane didn’t want to die. But she was going to. She knew that, but she didn’t expect it to happen when she was fifteen years old. She was used to insults and being called mud, but she wasn’t prepared to die.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Lily Evans Potter & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	The Ghost of the Black Lake

**Author's Note:**

> An idea that I got yesterday and spent all night and day writing. Several trigger warnings, PLEASE read the tags. Explicit drowning, being tied up, briefly described torture at the end. If you want a tag added please just leave a comment. Thank you!

She didn’t remember her name. Or anything really. All she knew was the dark waters of the Black Lake beneath her and the distant grassy shore and castle in the distance. And occasionally, a gripping rage when taunting bullies came too close to the lake.

-

Viviane Irving was a muggleborn living in a war against her very existence. While she was proud of her heritage, she knew not to flaunt it. But that didn’t save her, because everyone knew already.

The two boys cornered her right before History, stunned her and carried her outside. When she finally awoke she recognized the two. Slytherin pureblood elitists who were secretive but still vocal about their beliefs. Eyes widening, Viviane tried to struggle out of their grasps but it was futile. Magic was a great thing, but in that moment Viviane hated it as she was completely paralyzed.

The familiar sound of water lapping at grass lined shores was in the background and the first boy smiled at her. It was a vicious, confident smile. The kind of smile that you hope you never see again because you know in every fiber of your being that the person in front of you wants to kill you and can succeed. Tears came easily to her frozen eyes.

Tragedy was easy to ignore until you became the victim.

-

The robes she wore were like the ones on the distant figures. But they were oh so heavy. When she floated above the surface of the water they hung down with invisible weight that dragged her straight back into the depths of unimaginable cold and haunting fear. She knew that she used to be a student, but when, what house, why did she die? The water held no answers as she struggled against the currents as if she weren’t already dead.

-

Viviane could not scream or cry out for help or even beg as she was tied up with grass transfigured into chains. The sky was overcast, threatening rain, and no students lounged on the grounds to save her. Viviane knew that nobody would even notice that she was gone at first. That nobody would come to save her. Befriending muggleborns was dangerous in these times, something that only the boldest blood traitors attempted.

Students whispered of a Lord Voldemort in the back of class. A powerful man only a few years older than her, yet he was already changing this world of dreams into a nightmare. Eleven year old Viviane didn’t understand why other kids threw hexes at her in the hall until and older housemate took her aside and explained  _ you are considered lesser, veins full of mud _ . By the time that Viviane was fifteen she hated that word,  _mud_ .

Yet there she was, lying in the mud, tied up and weighed down and so, so afraid. She could feel the petrifying spell wearing off, her fingers moving slightly. Now if only she could just reach her wand!

“Ah, ah, ah. Filthy little mudbloods like you don’t need wands. You need to be put in your place, among the rest of the disgusting dirt.” And the first boy snapped her wand.

Viviane could only stare in shock as the wood snapped easily in his hands, her connection to the wizarding world broken like a toy. The second boy cackled, “Can we undo the silencer now? I want to hear her  _scream_ .”

“Patience, you have to cast silencing spell around us. Then we can hear it. I wonder if mudbloods scream like animals?”

Viviane trembled as the second boy cast a spell she vaguely recognized. Memories of muggle cartoons with characters being weighed down by a ball and chain suddenly didn’t seem so funny anymore. She wondered how painful drowning was.

The magic keeping Viviane quiet suddenly dropped and she screamed. She screamed as loud and as long as she could, hoping desperately that someone, anyone would hear her and come save her. Because Viviane couldn’t save herself right now. She was as good as a muggle without her wand.

The boys laughed at her, mocking her screams. “Muggles really do sound like animals!” The second boy cackled in glee, “Now let’s toss her in! You figured out the bubblehead charm, right?”

“Of course I did. What do you think I am? Some dumb half-blood? I just need to cast it weakly enough that we can make a hole.” The first boy then pointed his wand at Viviane and muttered some spell she didn’t recognize.

A bubble of air appeared around Viviane’s head. It was weak and wobbly, distorting the outside world slightly and Viviane cried. The first boy poked his wand into the bubble until a small hole formed. The boys exchanged a look of anticipation and pointed their wands to lift Viviane into the air.

She screamed and cried and tried to struggle but the spell still held her movements stiff. The double wingardium leviosa on her robes carried her further and further away from solid ground until they finally dropped her.

The water was cold, so cold, as she plunged into the icy depths.

-

She didn’t know how long she had been a ghost. Day and night blended together and when she was beneath the surface of the lake she couldn’t tell at all. One day, her body, for lack of a better term, started screaming at her. It was like an invisible rope was hauling her towards the shore. She hadn’t been there in years, felt this  _desperate need_ in years. Last time was because-

And there was the reason. A group of boys were taunting another, and then spells were flying from both directions, and a pretty girl with red hair stormed onto the scene. Her. She was the one who needed help. A muggleborn soon to be in distress caused by some blood supremacist.

“I don’t need help from filthy little mudbloods like her!” The boy with long black hair finally shouted.

And then the world seemed to slow down, or maybe speed up. She was vaguely aware of the muggleborn saying something and leaving, but her focus was on revenge. The water stirred uneasily but rose to her command anyways. She floated closer to the shore, towards the child foolish enough to say something like that near  _her_ lake.

The children crowded around her prey shifted nervously at her approach, some raising wands and others simply backing away. One of the boys who had been fighting bravely asked, “Who’re you?”

She only glared at him and hissed, “Leave that girl alone  or _else_ .” And then continued to advance towards her murde- no, the insulter.

His dark eyes were wide with a mix of emotions. Fear, smugness, desperation. She didn’t care. She opened her mouth but no words came out, only a wail that echoed across the grounds and rattled the castle windows. The ghosts inside shivered as they recognized a fellow ghost’s death scream. It was loud and haunting, wobbling and distorted as if she were being choked by something. Most of the students had fled by that point.

Water rose up behind her and crashed down on the insulter. His robes were soaked in a way that matched her own and his long hair hung limply. There was only fear in his eyes now. She  _reveled_ in it.

“You will never speak that name again. If you do, I will find you and drag you to the bottom of the lake. And nobody will be able to stop me.” Her voice was wrong, she thought. It was choppy and breathless and her throat felt as though it were bubbling with lake water.

She didn’t bother waiting to see the boy’s reaction. She simply dove backwards into the water and made herself invisible and ceased to exist for awhile. The Ministry officials couldn’t find any vicious ghost and decided it had simply been a mean spirited prank on Severus Snape. The exorcist left and she eventually drifted back to consciousness, fear gripping her heart even though she was the one who had made threats of drowning.

-

Viviane remembered dropping small rocks into the pond by her house when she was little. Her older sister could skip them but she was more interested in the splashes the rocks made when dropped into the still water. Viviane didn’t like feeling as though she was simply an insignificant rock dropped into a pond, forgettable and unnoticed.

The spell holding her limbs locked in place had worn off but she was still wrapped in transfigured chains. Viviane willed with all of her might for them to break or disappear. She had done it accidentally often enough as a child. Why wouldn’t it work now? Hated toys were worthy of being destroyed but chains dragging her deeper and deeper into the Black Lake weren’t?

The chains stayed in place and Viviane sunk lower and lower.

-

The red haired girl came to visit her once. She thanked the water’s edge endlessly for making her friend reconsider what he was doing and apologize. She said that it wouldn’t ever be the same between them because he shouldn’t have said it at all and he should have apologized on his own, that she was sad she lost her friend but he couldn’t really be a friend if he thought that of her.

A friend calling her that, how disgusting. She disturbed the water so that the girl knew she was listening, that she cared. The girl smiled and left the lake with another thank you.

For the next week she kept herself submerged, screaming into the black around her. Did she have friends? Why was the water so cold when she was a ghost? 

_Why was she so afraid of dying when she was already dead?_

-

The hole in the bubble head charm was small. At first Viviane thought that maybe she could loosen the chains enough to kick to the surface before the bubble filled with water. But the chains didn’t loosen and the water moved quickly.

It poured into the bubble, sloshing around and filling Viviane with dread. It was filling up quickly, already at her mouth. The sun filtering through the water was faint now, barely a glimmer far, far above her.

The chains detransfigured but the sunlight was gone. Up was down and left was right and Viviane was lost in an endless void of dark and cold. The water was filling the whole bubble now and she couldn’t hold her breath much longer.

Viviane kicked feebly, weak and fatigued. The fear that she was swimming downwards churned in her stomach and her vision was almost completely black.

-

Sometimes she remembered something. A cruel laugh or intense fear. Maybe a burning sensation in her throat and lungs. She never remembered anything pleasant. She spent most of her time wishing and wondering about her life but when she remembered something she almost wished that she would never feel or think again.

Sometimes the water scared her. She would try to fly as far up as she could but somehow she always ended up flying downwards instead. She couldn’t escape the water so she gave up and lived with the constant fear. It’s not like the water could hurt her, right?

She thinks it over and over again until she is no longer afraid of her watery prison. Then she feels the cold again and it starts all over. She can’t escape the cycle of fearing the water and trying to escape and finally accepting that there is no escape.

-

Viviane had a fleeting thought. Weren’t there merpeople in the lake? Surely they could find her and save her. Or even the giant squid! It liked when students fed it toast so maybe it cared about them. Maybe she could be saved!

Just another couple of seconds and Viviane abandoned the thought. The bubble was heavy and full of water, her held breath wouldn’t last her much longer. Of course nobody would save her. Nobody knew where she was and if they did they probably wouldn’t do anything anyways. Who would want to help  her ? She was nothing but a  _filthy mudblood who didn’t know her place, it would be better if she just stopped struggling and let herself die, do everyone a favor._

No! No! Viviane thrashed against her chains weakly. She wouldn’t give in. She wouldn’t give those boys or any of the others that had told her those terrible things the satisfaction of giving up. They would never even know it but she would fight for the last breath!

Briefly, Viviane felt the chains loosen and disappear. She thought that maybe she saw a trident and tail in the distance. And then she knew nothing more and the world was gone.

-

She stared out blankly at the rippling surface of the water. She didn’t remember how long she had been drifting there. The violent tree that had been planted around the time she last interacted with humans had grown much larger. She must have spent years just floating there, staring. Her memory was mostly blank besides water and cold and fear. So why had she been snapped out of it again?

Shouting echoed across the water. And there her answer was. Another muggleborn to be defended and another prejudiced bastard to knock down a peg. But this felt different somehow. She was being pulled across the lake towards shore and she let it happen. This was the only fulfillment she would get for a while.

The wrongness only increased as she came closer to the situation pulling her in. There was no fighting, no spells cast. There was only two boys wading through the water with panicked faces. But why? The ghostly tug turned her attention to the water.

She felt herself seize up. There was a girl in the water, with soaked brown hair and robes lined in red. She desperately grasped a wand in one hand and was trying to stutter out a spell. Something cold and new and familiar at the same time shook her to the core.  _Wrong_ , her mind hissed.

She wasted no more time, she had to save herse- the girl! The water rose around the girl and lifted her higher. She forced all of her might into controlling the water and the girl was safely pushed to shore, to the two boys awaiting her.

As soon as the girl was safe the water settled and she flew away as fast as she could.

_Drowning. Drowning. Drowning. Cold. Fear. Cold. Inescapable. Help. Please. Drowning. Alone. Drowning. Dying. Fear. Cold. Drowning._

The thoughts stampeded through her mind, crushing everything in their path. Memories flashed through her mind, suddenly hers again no matter how much she didn’t want them.

She was drowning! She was so cold and afraid and she was going to die alone! Her ghostly robes weighed down heavily, dragging her into the water, deeper and deeper until the world was gone.

And then she exploded.

-

Ron, Harry, and Hermione looked up at the sudden explosion of noise.

“Bloody hell,” Ron exclaimed. “That ghost’s gone nutters!”

The surface of the Black Lake had exploded upwards. Tons of water flying into the air like some kind of wild fountain. A scream could be heard echoing behind the splashing of water.

“No time to think about that! We have to get Hermione to the hospital wing, the water was cold,” Harry tore his eyes away from the water and helped his friend up.

Hermione shivered, “I d-don’t s-suppose either of y-you know any h-heating s-spells?”

“Sorry Hermione. Come on let’s go, all of that water is heading straight for us.”

Ron helped support Hermione and the trio hurriedly made their way towards the castle. The water was landing and sending violent waves towards the shore.

“I’m going to murder Flint. He could have killed you!” Ron ranted angrily, shoes squelching with each step.

“You can murder Flint after we get to the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey will ask what happened and we can probably get him suspended, if not expelled,” Harry pacified his friend.

Ron mumbled, “But it’s April! The water could have killed her. Of course we’ve got to worry about three headed dogs _and_ drowning .”

-

It hurt so much, and the pain just wouldn’t stop. She, no,  _Viviane_ , relived her dying moments over and over. The awful realization that she would die alone and terrified, drowning in a lake where she wouldn’t be removed from for several more hours.

Eventually, the memories grew quieter and allowed Viviane to think. A new urge was pulling at her core and she knew what this one was. Revenge.

-

It was too late for the man. The Ministry was notified by a panicked house elf and they apparated in, but they were too slow. He had a bubble of water around his head and his arms and legs were snapped in half as if they were just pieces of fragile wood.

When they were flagged down by another house elf they moved faster. A squad of authors specializing in dark creatures burst into the house. It was eerily silent until they stepped into the back yard. A man was pinned to the grass by water, his eyes were lifeless and the ghostly teenager with soaking robes and tears running down her face screamed.

“Now who’s screaming like an animal? You are! You are! I hate you! You took everything from me! I’m dead because of you! You’ve ruined everything!” She then screamed, something horrible and gargled that made even the most battle hardened aurors flinch. It never stopped hurting to hear children scream in pain and fear. But this was a murderer, not a child.

The ghost disappeared and the group rushed to the man. The examiner shuddered, “He was completely dehydrated and then drowned.”

It was a horrifying sight. The group already knew what they had to do. The resident exorcist nodded solemnly and they apparated to the Hogwarts gates.

-

Viviane could barely see. Everything was overshadowed by black and drifting bubbles. A sudden pain cleared her eyes and she was standing in front of a woman with a determined look in her eyes.

She was saying something and then chanting and doing magic but Viviane didn’t care. It  _hurt_ and she was _done_ hurting. She had hurt enough for her entire afterlife.

Her mind spiraled back into memories of choking on water and being unable to move. Dark and cold and alone. It all cleared away for just one moment and she saw with perfect clarity. Viviane sobbed to the woman in front of her.

“ _I don’t want to die_.”

And the world was gone.


End file.
